Put away your purse & become debt-averse

foxgloves

'Ey up Campers,
Such a cold wind here today. Blue sky a lot of the time & sunshine, but it was nithering when I went out for a bit of a fitness walk earlier & I was pleased to be back indoors doing my job list!
One thing I do at the beginning of every week, since discovering budgeting, is to sit down with all the receipts from that weekend's grocery shopping, plus any relating to purchases made from other budget pots, as well as the petty cash purse (for popping out for a pint of milk or paying cash on the market for our fruit & veg, etc) and whatever scribbled notes I've invariably made myself, & then sitting down at my desk to get my monthly grocery budget tracker sheet updated. I jot down every spend, what budget was used & what budget SHOULD have been used if there's been some unavoidable cross-over. Then there's an action column with what I need to do to keep all our different budget pots straight. So, we had a really busy weekend, & although there was no silly spending, I hadn't remembered to separate out purchases from a couple of budgets & they had got in a bit of a muddle. After all my workings out & some coffee, then a diagram, & some more coffee, I worked out that there should be a total of £19-64 currently of grocery petty cash. I'm usually happy if I can get the figures close, say anywhere from £15 to £18 would be fine, but having done all the different swaps, I counted up what was left over & had £19-64 EXACTLY!! I must admit that as a born again budgeter, rather than a life-long financially prudent person, I am tragically chuffed with myself when this happens! I've made no secret of the fact that I lived outside my means & failed embrace any sort of budget whatsoever for two & a half decades, so it seems almost comical that I find the whole accurate household accounts thing so rewarding now. Back in the day, I was well into my overdraft by two weeks after payday. Now I'm enjoying the achievement of getting a whole £19.64 grocery petty cash sum to balance!!
Lol, oh well, we can all change our bad habits, can't we?
F x

joedenise

Your system sounds really complicated foxgloves! I just use YNAB (the old version which I bought outright - I'm dreading it packing up!). I refuse to pay a monthly fee for the new version though. I might even have to have a go at spreadsheets again like I did years ago before YNAB (if I can remember how to do it!).

I think it's great that you managed to get your budget to balance exactly - you deserve to be chuffed with that.

Denise

Chrystal

foxgloves wrote: »

'Ey up Campers,
Such a cold wind here today. Blue sky a lot of the time & sunshine, but it was nithering when I went out for a bit of a fitness walk earlier & I was pleased to be back indoors doing my job list!
One thing I do at the beginning of every week, since discovering budgeting, is to sit down with all the receipts from that weekend's grocery shopping, plus any relating to purchases made from other budget pots, as well as the petty cash purse (for popping out for a pint of milk or paying cash on the market for our fruit & veg, etc) and whatever scribbled notes I've invariably made myself, & then sitting down at my desk to get my monthly grocery budget tracker sheet updated. I jot down every spend, what budget was used & what budget SHOULD have been used if there's been some unavoidable cross-over. Then there's an action column with what I need to do to keep all our different budget pots straight. So, we had a really busy weekend, & although there was no silly spending, I hadn't remembered to separate out purchases from a couple of budgets & they had got in a bit of a muddle. After all my workings out & some coffee, then a diagram, & some more coffee, I worked out that there should be a total of £19-64 currently of grocery petty cash. I'm usually happy if I can get the figures close, say anywhere from £15 to £18 would be fine, but having done all the different swaps, I counted up what was left over & had £19-64 EXACTLY!! I must admit that as a born again budgeter, rather than a life-long financially prudent person, I am tragically chuffed with myself when this happens! I've made no secret of the fact that I lived outside my means & failed embrace any sort of budget whatsoever for two & a half decades, so it seems almost comical that I find the whole accurate household accounts thing so rewarding now. Back in the day, I was well into my overdraft by two weeks after payday. Now I'm enjoying the achievement of getting a whole £19.64 grocery petty cash sum to balance!!
Lol, oh well, we can all change our bad habits, can't we?
F x

You have every right to feel chuffed .:A

I wish I could change MY bad habits
Do you remember the song 'There's a hole in my bucket Dear Lisa' ? Well in my case it's a hole in my purse/bank account! Usually down to me being totally stupid with other people!

Think I need an injection of Resolution

foxgloves

It's not as complicated as it sounds, JoeDenise. It's just that I do cash budgets for 6 categories plus our monthly 'personal spends' is cash, & I like a bit of grocery petty cash because so few of our local market traders (who have fab fruit & veg) have card reader gizmos. I make a list of what I'm planning to buy, so make sure I take cash from that 'pot' with me. It only gets a bit mixed up when I've seen a bargain that's too good to miss or have items in one transaction which are technically from two different budgets. I've never used YNAB. Don't blame you for not wanting to pay a monthly fee for it. I have an Excel spreadsheet for regular bills/DDs, etc, but other categories of expenditure, while they have a target amount, are paid how I see fit, depending on current needs v future needs, etc.
But however we all do it, yes, it's satisfying to have it all work out accurately, isn't it?

foxgloves

Lol, Crystal, I do know that old song about the hole in the bucket, so here is verse 2:
"Then mend it, dear Crystal, dear Crystal, dear Crystal,
Then mend it, dear Crystal,
Dear Crystal,
Mend IT!
If it's being too generous with other people that is causing the holey bucket, it doesn't always help in the long run. Looking back at all the times my parents helped me out financially over the years before the LBM...... I'd say it was for a big car repair bill or some other catastrophe, & it was, but the real problem was that I never saved anything for an emergency fund. I used to say I didn't earn enough to save back then, but I had a full time professional job & if I'd put into savings what I spent on magazines & unnecessary tat, I'd have had an awesome emergency fund. Grrrr. No point wasting time wishing I'd been different. I did eventually see the light, & am grateful for that, as we'd have struggled financially with my redundancy if we'd still got all that debt.
F x

joedenise

We were very much the same until our LBM which didn't happen until we were nearly 40, just wish it had been much earlier as then we would have been able to buy our own property earlier.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!) neither set of parents were able to help us out so we had to sort ourselves out. I'm glad that we did because I suspect if our parents had helped us we would still be renting now rather than actually owning our property - paid off about 3 years ago when DH was nearing retirement.

We now have an emergency fund, savings for holidays, savings for birthdays/christmas etc etc. I think we have everything covered now! In fact we're about to start another 'pot' to pay for a "big" holiday for our golden wedding anniversary in a couple of years time.

I have to admit to not tracking our cash spends but we do put most things on cards so the cash gets used for things like buying fruit and veg in our local farm shop & eggs from another greengrocer in the nearest town so should really be budgeted within the grocery pot but isn't but it works for us.

Denise
Denise

foxgloves

Well, JoeDenise, you still reached your LBM before me! I was into my 40s before it struck with a vengeance. I do try not to dwell too much on what might have been had I abandoned the Spendy Years earlier, but I can't change anything now. I think I just feel relieved that it actually came when it did, because with the explosion of such easy credit in the 1990s, there'll be heaps of people going into retirement still with the millstone of consumer debt around their necks. I'm going to continue with my budgeting & late-discovered sensible financial behaviour to ensure as best I can that I'm not one of them. My parents didn't have the sort of money to be dolling our enormous sums, but they did quite often write me a cheque for anything between £200 & £500 to help out when the self-inflicted 'black hole' of my finances threatened to bite me hard on the bum. Thinking back, if they hadn't done this, or had stopped it as soon as it was abundantly clear that I had no intention of sorting out my financial bad habits, I think I'd have come to my senses sooner. I always think this when I read a post on here from a parent sorting out their offspring's debts that it's very nice of them to help - & I was of course grateful to my Mum & Dad for doing this - but longer term, it won't help unless the behaviour changes. I carried on outspending my means for another 20 years+ after my first parental bailout.
f

foxgloves

Morning Campers,
Icy start here today. In fact, the bird bath was solid ice! I only realised this when I noticed a starling having a mini skating session when he'd only rocked up for his morning bath! Lovely spring sunshine now, though. Popping out for a walk shortly.
Sleeping better this past week after some really annoying early waking. Oh dear, though, I did have a weird dream.......I think the ending may show that I am getting very set in my frugal ways. What do you think?
The basic dream (without pages of twists & turns....):
"I was walking through a 1970s style housing estate because I needed to call on a particular house for some reason, which wasn't actually clear in the dream. I went up the drive, knocked & a young woman answered, invited me in & made me a cup of coffee. I said what I'd come to say (can't remember what it was) & said I'd better get a move on because I'd got other people to visit. However, she kept finding quite bad-tempered reasons why I shouldn't leave yet, she kept herself physically in the way of the door & kept trying to contact someone on her mobile phone. Then another woman arrived & it became clear that they intended to hold me hostage for some reason that they didn't explain. I got the impression they were in some kind of trouble & needed A hostage, & as I'd appeared on their doorstep, it would be me! I started negotiating my own release. They weren't having any of it & confiscated my phone. They then said they were going out & locked me in. All doors & windows were deadlocked. No chance of getting out there & no landline. Hmmmm. I was frightened but decided my advantage waas that I was cleverer than them. I looked for paper & something to write on so I could put a big notice in the window, but there was absolutely nothing suitable. Employing a bit of lateral thinking, I went into the kitchen to see if there was any tomato puree so that I could squirt 'Help me' on the front window. There wasn't, but there was a can of chopped tomatoes & a tin opener!! I managed to paint the words 'Help, phone police, I am being kept against my will' on the inside of the window with those & remembered to do it backwards so it could be read from outside........
Now, normally, in this kind of dream, you'd find that the tomatoes were too runny, or the window was too slidey, or you'd keep repeatedly trying but not be able to do it, but in THIS dream, I could do it, it worked brilliantly, but I just stood there looking at it, thinking 'What a waste of tomatoes!!! You could have done 2 portions of Madras & 2 portions of tuna gnocchi out of that!!'
And on that note, I awoke, so I can't even tell you if my tomatoey call for help worked & if I got rescued, lol!
Honestly, what a daft dream, & it makes me laugh that it ended up with me feeling cross about wasting food! We do aim to be a zero food-waste household, but I wouldn't begrudge the use of a tin of A*di tomatoes for the purpose of thwarting kidnappers!
Oh well, better get signed out of here & off to the post box - important letter needs to go off today.
Love to all,
F xx

joedenise

I'm glad neither mine nor DHs parents were able to help us - well that's not quite true as my dad used to have an allotment so he often gave us fruit and veg which in itself helped us! But they were never in a position to help financially.

Fortunately we were always able to cover our debts, it's just so annoying we couldn't sort things out earlier! As you say it's no use dwelling on what might have been. We can't change the past but we can sort out our futures.

Denise

joedenise

What a funny dream! But you're right about being set in frugal mode and not wanting to waste food, LOL!

Denise